Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

My gratitude to Sam Asin for indispensable assistance with research.
Thanks to Clio Stearns not only for help with research but for valuable
readings of the book as well. Gratitude to Deborah Stearns for guidance
in the happiness literature along with her constructive readings of
the book. Laura Bell...

1 Introduction: Being Cheerful and Modern

The vision of what modern society might be emerged more than two
centuries ago, as a product of a transformation in Western philosophy
and a new belief in the way material progress and human improvability
might combine. It was in the 1790s that the French philosopher
Nicolas de Condorcet...

PART I. The Modern and the Happy: A Tenuous Embrace

Measuring happiness aims at an elusive target. For all the inherent
imprecision, however, we really do know that there is no full
correlation between modernity and happiness. In Western and particularly
American society...

2 The Gap: Happiness Scales and the Edge of Sadness

Modernity lends itself to two related assessments: an evaluation of
key modern trends in terms of their actual, and usually complex,
impact; and a discussion of relationships between a society’s achievement
of modernity and the levels of satisfaction or happiness of its members.
This book will actually...

3 Component Parts: Modernity and Ideas of Happiness and Progress as Historical Forces

The basic framework of modernity began to emerge from the late
18th century onward, initially in the West. Not only obvious trappings,
like new steam-driven factories, but also more personal signs, like
a new commitment to comfort, mark the inception of trends that still,
broadly speaking, continue. The novel interest in happiness emerged at
the same point, and has...

PART II. Maladjustments in Modernity

Several factors, not surprisingly, contribute to the gaps between
modernity and satisfaction, and to the retreat of large progressive
visions. The first chapter in this section deals with the easiest—and undeniably
important—explanations, in a (modern?) impatience with undue
gratitude for past...

4 Modernity’s Deciencies

We’ve touched already on some of the key reasons modernity can go
a bit stale after initial enthusiasms. Ingratitude and what-are-youdoing-
for-me-today expectations are high on the list, but the small but
pressing agenda of modern missteps looms even larger. Major historical
change always has down...

5 False Starts and Surprises: Making Modernity More Difficult

This chapter deals with four aspects of modernity—gender, sexuality,
aging, and eating—that incorporate immensely promising changes
away from traditional patterns. In contrast to the trends of war or environmental
degradation, we’re not discussing measurably “bad” outcomes.
Nor, however, are...

6 The Dilemmas of Work in Modernity

Polls taken of British factory workers by the 1950s and 1960s neatly
defined the problem of figuring out how work stands in modern society:
a majority professed some real job satisfaction, but nearly as large
a majority said they hoped their kids would find different opportunities.
The sense that options...

PART III. Great Expectations

In at least two crucial aspects of life, the huge gains brought by modernity
quickly generated additional expectations that equally quickly
began to cloud the gains. We turn in this section to the “what have you
done for me today?” side of the modern mentality, where real gains are
soon eclipsed by ambitious...

7 Death as a Modern Quandary

..Modernity and death are not friends. The relationship is not as
dreadful as some observers have claimed, citing death as the “new
modern taboo,” for some constructive adjustments have occurred. But
death does not have a clear modern welcome and, ironically, earlier ideas
of a good death have gone by the boards. Many adults die less well than
their counterparts did...

8 Century of the Child? Childhood, Parenting, and Modernity

Many American polls from the later 20th century onward suggest
that the happiest kind of married couple is childless, a truly striking
finding and an obvious change from the good old days, when having children
was a fundamental goal of marriage. A study by Daniel Gilbert suggests
that the average American...........

9 Born to Shop: Consumerism as the Modern Panacea

Consumerism—no surprise here—has become a fundamental aspect
of modern societies. It accumulates the most obvious bundle of
steadily rising expectations, seemingly boundless in some instances.
Increasing commitments by individuals, families, and societies at large
to amass goods not...

Conclusion: Shaping Modernity

It’s time to adjust the adage, given what we know about the wide history
of modernity. Those who do not know the past may indeed be
condemned to repeat some of the past’s mistakes. That is the conventional
statement, still valid. More to the point, however: those who do
not know the past cannot...

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